Trump and Co. Can’t Keep Their Lies Straight

From the Epstein files to the Justice Department, it’s hard for the mooks to remember which lie they’re supposed to tell.

Sen. Lindsey Graham is typically a reliable cheerleader for the White House at home and abroad. So it was notable to hear him say yesterday, fresh off a trip to the Middle East, that the peace deal between Israel and Hamas might be working less well than the administration has hoped: “What did I learn on this trip? That Hamas is not disarming,” Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press. “They’re rearming. Hamas is not abandoning power. They’re consolidating power.” Happy Monday.

---

From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)

Trump’s Modified Limited Coverup

by William Kristol

President Richard Nixon: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the—let it hang out, so to speak?

White House Counsel John Dean: Well, it’s, it isn’t really that—
White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman: It’s a limited hangout.
Dean: It’s a limited hangout.
Assistant to the President John Ehrlichman: It’s a modified limited hangout.

—Audiotape of Oval Office meeting, March 22, 1973

Half a century later, we’re in the early stages of another modified limited hangout. And as in Watergate, a modified limited hangout really means a modified limited coverup. A partial truth is a partial lie. The Nixon Oval Office exchange quoted above immediately followed a discussion of John Dean creating a false report of the White House’s role in the Watergate break-in. Nixon’s modified limited hangout wasn’t some kind of an attempt to come clean.

Nor is Donald Trump’s. The problem with the Justice Department’s modified, limited release of the Jeffrey Epstein files since Friday afternoon isn’t that there have been some mistaken redactions and some mistaken non-redactions. The problem is that the administration has decided simply not to release key documents, like the original victim statements and the 60-count draft indictment of Epstein.

We’re in the midst of a coverup. A modified coverup, perhaps, but a coverup nonetheless.

One implication of this is that we need to shed all our old, post-Watergate assumptions about the Department of Justice. Trump’s “Department of Justice” is Trump’s defense team. There should be no presumption they’re acting in good faith. One has to think of them as one thought of a Soviet bloc “Department of Justice”—as dedicated to pro-regime propaganda, not justice or the truth.

The good news, as I’ve suggested before, is that partial coverups are difficult to pull off. Once you have to abandon the initial attempt to stonewall—Nixon’s original blanket denial of White House involvement in the Watergate burglary, the Trump administration’s attempt to shut the door to any action on the Epstein matter with the “nothing to see here” statement from the Justice Department and FBI on July 6—you’re sailing in dark and choppy waters. Visibility is limited. It’s hard to keep your balance. A coverup is hard to navigate. Especially if you don’t have Soviet-like control of the other institutions of society.

Why the decision to cover-up? Well, in the case of Watergate, there were things Nixon and his lieutenants didn’t want Congress and the public to know. With regards to the Epstein files, it certainly seems that there are things that Trump and his lieutenants don’t want Congress and the public to know. Presumably these are things that, to put it gently, don’t reflect well on Trump. Since he has been pretty successful in his ability to survive embarrassing revelations, it’s a reasonable assumption these secrets really don’t reflect well on him.

A little more than a month after the March 22, 1973, Oval Office meeting, Nixon fired its participants—Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean—along with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. That bought him a little time, perhaps, but didn’t really change the trajectory of the scandal. The public understood that Watergate was Nixon’s crime and coverup, not that of his aides. A little over a year later, President Nixon was forced to resign. The other participants in the Oval Office meeting ended up in jail.

I offer the obvious disclaimer: For a million reasons, history is unlikely simply to repeat itself a half century later. Alas! On the other hand, this scandal has unraveled far more than most thought possible several months ago. Few observers of American politics expected Robert Garcia and Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie to be among the most consequential members of the House in 2025.

It’s probably too much to hope that today’s modified limited coverup will end in a failure as resounding as Nixon’s. I suppose such a ringing vindication of justice is too much to expect today.

But politics is full of surprises. One heartening surprise of this past year is that the Epstein victims have finally been accorded the standing and respect they deserve. Their ongoing effect on unraveling this coverup shouldn’t be underestimated. And in any case, we owe them our continued and unsparing effort to uncover the truth and achieve justice.

---

The Wrong Lie at the Wrong Time

by Will Saletan

Speaking of keeping track of lies: One problem with lawyering for an overt crook is that it’s hard to keep track of which lies you can get away with, because the crook sometimes blurts out what you’re trying to cover up.

This was the predicament Todd Blanche found himself in on Sunday. Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, is now the deputy attorney general of the United States. On Meet the Press, Kristen Welker asked him about the September 20 Truth Social post in which Trump openly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to indict former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Leticia James.

Welker asked, “Does President Trump speak to you or to the attorney general directly about individual criminal cases and investigations, Mr. Blanche?”

In an ethical administration, the deputy attorney general could have honestly said: No, the president doesn’t do such things. But Blanche didn’t say that. Instead, he stonewalled: “I will never talk about the communications I have with President Trump.”

Why did Blanche play it safe? Maybe because Welker, by reminding him of what Trump had publicly written, made Blanche think that lying about the pressure campaign would be untenable.

But then Welker brought up Erik Siebert, a career federal prosecutor who, as she recounted, “was fired after refusing to prosecute these cases against James Comey.” This time, Blanche decided to risk a denial. “Mr. Siebert wasn’t fired because he refused to bring cases,” he shot back. “He resigned, okay?”

Poor Blanche. He might have answered that question differently if Welker had read him the rest of Trump’s September 20 post. Siebert “lied to the media and said he quit,” the president wrote. “No, I fired him.”

In another post earlier that day, Trump said the same thing: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”

This is one of those rare cases in which Truth Social told the truth. Trump pushed out a prosecutor for admitting there was no case against Comey. Then Trump berated Bondi for failing to secure indictments against his enemies, and he installed another flunky to orchestrate the bogus indictment, which was then dismissed. All along, Trump has been hectoring Bondi, Blanche, and others to pursue his vendettas.

For a minute there, Blanche thought he could get away with lying about it. He forgot that the boss had already spilled the beans.

---

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Mark Kelly Isn’t Backing Down… SEN.ATOR MARK KELLY sits down with JOHN AVLON on How to Fix It to discuss Pentagon intimidation, the rule of law, and his AI for America plan—covering job displacement, data-center energy demands, and what it will take for the United .States. to beat China on AI without chaos.

• George Conway Has an Announcement… On George Conway Explains it All, GEORGE and SARAH close out the year—and this chapter of the show—with a conversation on the legal chaos of the Trump era. And, an announcement!

• Trump’s Assault on Health Care, Seen From a Country That Does Health Care Better… Japan is a showcase for universal health care, and a demonstration of what we’re losing in GOP attacks on the Affordable Care Act, writes JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown..

• An Autopsy Report of the DNC’s Autopsy Report… Who killed the committee’s look back at the 2024 election—and why? LAUREN EGAN reports in The Opposition.

• We Need to Secure Our Supply Chains… On Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN welcomes Council on Foreign Relations President MIKE FROMAN to discuss CFR’s new task force report on U.S. economic security..

• Pete Hegseth Said Military Chaplains Are ‘Degraded.’ He’s Wrong... Military chaplains exist to help service members, not indoctrinate them, writes MARK HERTLING.

---

Quick Hits

SELF-CENSORSHIP AT CBS: The promos were cut—and then promptly deleted. CBS News head honcho Bari Weiss decided at the last minute to pull a 60 Minutes report on CECOT, the hellhole prison in El Salvador to which the Trump administration sent hundreds of mostly innocent people, often without due process. What were the reasons for her decision?

In a statement Sunday night, Weiss said:

“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

What critical voices were missing from the story about a torture factory? Not those of the victims—they were reportedly well represented in the story. Weiss held the feature because she wanted to get a comment from the Trump administration. She reportedly gave the lead journalist on the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, the cell phone number for Stephen Miller. Alfonsi noted that she had reached out to the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, all of which declined to comment.

So, not the voices of the victims, but of their assailants.

The New York Times obtained an email from Alfonsi to her CBS colleagues: “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.” It must be noted that this all took place just weeks after Trump launched his latest salvo against the program, lamenting that it hadn’t changed under the stewardship of CBS’s new owner, David Ellison.

Weiss has consistently trumpeted her commitment to treating all sides evenly and fairly. It’s hard to see how this decision was “fair” to the Trump administration—or those it oppressed. But hey, at least they didn’t edit down an interview this time!

---

ADIOS, ELISE: Elise Stefanik has seen enough. The New York Republican announced Friday that she will suspend her campaign for governor and will not seek re-election to her House seat. It’s a sudden, stunning end—or at least intermission—in the career of someone who once seemed a rising GOP star in two different eras: first as a young, moderate Paul Ryan protégée, and then, when she sensed the party’s direction shifting, as a hyper-partisan Donald Trump acolyte.

Stefanik’s reinvention was transparently political, a source of black humor for onetime allies and supporters who thought she sold her soul. But the bet seemed to be paying off—until, suddenly, it wasn’t. Trump nominated her to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, then abruptly yanked her nomination to protect her seat in the House. When she decided to run for governor instead, she assumed he would endorse her and clear the field, but that endorsement never materialized.

Stefanik has always been more of a canny operator than a true believer; as Republicans’ midterm prospects sour, she seems uninterested in going down with the ship. And maybe there are more reinventions to come in her future. For now, though, her foreshortened career is a cautionary tale of the limits of a devil’s bargain with Trump, who never comes through more than he feels like.

---

PRINCE JD: For years now, Donald Trump has held the Republican party in thrall in a way that’s politically unprecedented in America; if and when he steps off the political stage, the intra-GOP power vacuum will be immense. But a powerful, organized effort is already underway to ease the transition. The Wall Street Journal reports on Turning Point USA’s effort to turn JD Vance from the first among a host of possible next Republican leaders to Trump’s inevitable-seeming successor:

Before Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, he was readying for JD Vance to become the next president of the United States. Now, Erika Kirk is determined to make that happen.

In her kickoff remarks for Turning Point USA’s first major event since his death, Kirk’s widow told the 31,000 attendees: “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.”

The vice president closed the mega conference held here Sunday. Behind the scenes, Turning Point is setting up infrastructure to boost his potential 2028 presidential bid. The conservative group is planning to put representatives in all of Iowa’s 99 counties ahead of the presidential primary.

Iowa is an important early state in the presidential nominating process, and Turning Point is already trying to build grassroots support for Vance there, according to Tyler Bowyer, a top executive with the organization and a close friend of the late Kirk.

“Why mess around? Let the Democrats destroy each other in the primary process, while we benefit from the rare luxury of having a candidate that’s so clearly the front-runner,” Bowyer said in an interview backstage at the conference.

Read the whole thing.

---

Cheap Shots